From narrow-gap and semimagnetic semiconductors to spintronics and topological matter: a life with spins

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of narrow-gap and semimagnetic semiconductors, highlighting their significance in topological matter and spintronics, through experimental, theoretical, and materials studies over the past fifty years.

Contribution

It provides a biased yet insightful overview of key research results linking semiconductors to topological and spintronic phenomena, emphasizing historical and scientific perspectives.

Findings

Significant advances in materials development for spintronics.

Experimental evidence supporting topological states in semiconductors.

Theoretical models explaining spin-related phenomena.

Abstract

The abundance of semiconductors in our smartphones, computers, fiber optic junctions, cars, light sources, photovoltaic and thermoelectric cells results from the possibilities of controlling their properties through doping, lighting, and applying various fields. This paper, a part of the volume celebrating 100 years of the Polish Physical Society, presents a biased selection of worthwhile results obtained by researchers at the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences relevant, as seen today, to topological matter and spintronics. Comprehensive studies, combining materials development, experimental investigations, and theoretical description of narrow-gap and dilute-magnetic semiconductors have been especially significant in this context. This survey also emphasizes, in an autobiographical tone, a half of a century of the author's intellectual emotions accompanying the rise of ideas and quantitative theories, allowing identifying the physics behind ongoing and future observations.